The present invention generally relates to product display cabinets and, more particularly, to a multisided refrigerated display cabinet.
Various product display cabinets, including multisided refrigerated cabinets have been proposed in the past for allowing food products to be displayed and readily accessed by the customer. Many refrigerated display units include air ducts within the product compartment for distributing cooled air from the refrigeration unit associated with the display throughout the product display compartment of the cabinet. While these air ducts will generally fulfill the objective of distributing air in an even manner, they also take up valuable product space within the compartment or require that the display cabinet be made larger to account for the space taken up by the air ducts.
Refrigerated display cabinets also generally include some type of lighting for the product compartment. Conventionally, fluorescent lighting is mounted within the product display compartment. As this lighting necessarily generates heat within the compartment which is being cooled by the refrigeration unit, the refrigeration efficiency of the display is reduced. That is, the refrigeration unit must work harder to counteract the heat produced by the lighting. One manner to attack this problem is to use less lighting or lower wattage lights in the product display compartment. This is undesirable, however, as the product in the compartment will be less visible and consumers will be generally less attracted to the display.
As refrigerated displays are being increasingly used in the high traffic check-out areas of grocery stores, for example, it has become important to maintain their pleasing appearance and, therefore, their attraction to the consumer. One of the main ways that these check-out displays become marred and unattractive is by repeated impact with the shopping carts of customers. Often, the displays do not have adequate bumper pads or do not have bumper pads disposed at the correct impact height or location for every size and style of shopping cart.
It therefore would be desirable to provide a product display cabinet, especially a refrigerated display cabinet, which addresses these and other problems in the art and presents a more space and energy efficient cabinet as well as a cabinet which is more attractive to the consumer over a longer period of time.